Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c8.201

c8.201

According to Hopkins¹ “The Vishṇu worship which grew about Kṛishṇa was probably at first an attempt to foist upon Vedic believers a sectarian god, by identifying the latter with a Vedic divinity.” “The epic describes the overthrow of an old Brāhmaṇic Aryan race at the hands of the Pāṇḍavas, an unknown folk, whose King’s polyandrous marriage is an historical trait, connecting the tribe closely with the polyandrous wild tribes located north of the Ganges. This tribe attacked the stronghold of Brāhmaṇism in the holy land about the present Delhi; and their patron god is the Gangetic Kṛishṇa.”² “The simple original view of Kṛishṇa is that he is a god, the son of Devakī.”³